Larry Trainor

Larry Trainor was a leading activist of the Socialist Workers Party (US) in Boston and a member of the party's National Committee (NC). He is widely seen as a catalyst of the dramatic changes in the SWP between 1965 and 1985. He advocated the tightening of the party's organisational norms and its later turn to industry. He inspired the Proletarian Orientation Tendency which existed prior to the 1971 conference of the SWP.

According to an [http://www.angelfire.com/pr/red/usswp/dont_strangle_the_party.htm article] by George Breitman, in 1965 Trainor was the first to request disciplinary action against Arne Swabeck and Richard Fraser, NC members who had circulated documents to non-NC members insider th SWP to propose a view approach towards Maoism. Frank Lovell explained in an 1983 [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/document/fit/partynorms.htm speech] that Trainor "complained to the national office that this was a violation of National Committee membership discipline; and the PC put the question of discipline on the agenda of that plenum." This cautious approach towards committee discipline was challenged by James P. Cannon, then the party's chairman emeritus. However, Trainor's approach became accepted in the party. He was mentor to Barry Sheppard, later the SWP's National Organization Secretary, and who played a key role in developing tighter organisational norms for the SWP.

Trainor's views are sometimes described as workerist. While this is disputed, his is widely seen as inspiring a number of currents that argued for the SWP to deepen its roots in the working class, including the Proletarian Orientation Tendency.

Trainor was a keen socialist educator and spent a lot of time giving excellent classes on the history of the Trotskyist movement and especially on Stalinism, according to [http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2003-December/000895.html Les Evenchick] . For example, Trainor was the author of an oral [http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/oral/trainor/ History Of American Trotskyism] .